The DYAMOND Inititative

Figure: 2.5km global atmospheric simulation using the ICON model.

DYAMOND stands for DYnamics of the Atmospheric general circulation Modeled On Non-hydrostatic Domains. This initiative project describes a framework for the intercomparison of an emerging class of atmospheric circulation models that, through their resolution of the major modes of atmospheric heat transport, endeavor to represent the most important scales of the full three-dimensional fluid dynamics of the atmospheric circulation. The DYAMOND protocol (pdf) specifies a simulation of forty days and forty nights, beginning at 1 August 2016, using global models with a storm resolving grid spacing of 5 km or less. As initial and boundary data, daily sea-surface temperatures as well as global meteorological analysis taken from the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) are provided. The DYAMOND protocol was kept as simple as possible to encourage participation and ensure a fast turn-around. At the moment, nine different groups from six national entities across three continents submitted and demonstrate that such simulations are nowerdays practical.

DYAMOND addresses two main questions:

How sensitive are the simulations to a particular implementation?

What are performance and analysis bottle necks associated with global storm-resolving models?

Due to the joint interest in high-resolution simulations, ESiWACE strongly supports and interacts with DYAMOND.

Participating Groups and Models

The idea of DYAMOND arose in October 2017 and started as a joint initiative between the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M, Bjorn Stevens) and University of Tokyo (Masaki Satoh). Further impulse was given through the involvement of US participants (Chris Bretherton, University of Washington), the support of Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD) through the Hans Ertel Centre for Weather Research (HErZ) project (Daniel Klocke). Within the scope of the ESiWACE project the German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ) agreed to host the output and serve as an analysis hub for the community (Joachim Biercamp, Philipp Neumann).

Participating models are listed below along with the models' main scientific/technical contact.

Input Data

Initial Data for 1 August 2016A IFS grib file with initial data for 1 August 2016 is provided here. To process the data, you may use cdo or eccodes. A NetCDF file, basically equivalent with the grib input, is provided here. Alternatively, the initial data can be directly retrieved from the MARS database at ECMWF using this request.Data for Sea Surface Temperature and Sea IceIFS data (7 day means) are provided here.

News

From 20 to 21 August 2018, scientists and programmers met for the first joint DYAMOND Hackathon. It was dealing with methods and techniques for the analysis of global, cloud-resolving simulations within the project DYAMOND.